When doing nothing is a viable option

In all walks of life, we are encouraged to be ‘doing’. In fact, in business life, it is often frowned upon not to have ‘a big idea’ in response to every challenge. This then becomes a pattern of one-upmanship and so the stress and anxiety are ramped up.

Even during the first weeks of ‘lockdown’ in the UK and around the world in response to COVID-19, social media was rife with rammed schedules from schoolwork to Joe Wicks. If you weren’t ‘doing’, you weren’t ‘doing ‘it’ right’.

Although we have moved away from competitive office environments, the one-upmanship has followed us home, and so has the stress and worry that our individual approach to this brave new world was just not up to it, as we struggle to make sense of what is happening.

My own lived experience and working with overwhelmed police officers, military veterans and others, has taught me that such seemly catastrophic moments in our lives can seed the correct conditions in which we can flourish. Doing nothing is one of these conditions. By stopping judging ourselves harshly against other’s actions and going with what seems right for us, allows us to find what works for us. I have witnessed my own and others incredible ability to rebalance our mental state if given the right conditions.

COVID-19 has provided us with a reset, even for those in the frontline. We have to prioritise our own wellbeing in order to better serve ourselves and our communities; everything else is just noise.